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SOME RELIEF FOR SSI RECIPIENTS  
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Mike Ervin
January 18, 2024
The Progressive
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_ Social Security settles in court and must repay funds it had forced
recipients to pay back. _

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People who receive support from Social Security in the form of
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments don’t have much to cheer
about. Relying on SSI as your primary source of income isn’t much
fun because it means being dirt poor. The maximum
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payment is $943 per month. I’m not a math whiz, but that adds up to
an annual income of less than $12,000. Try living on that.

Also, an individual can’t have more than $2,000 in assets, including
in bank accounts. If two people who both get SSI are married, their
combined monthly check can’t be more
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$1,415 and their assets can’t be more than $3,000.

But there is a bit of good news for some SSI recipients. You may
recall that just about everything shut down in the spring of 2020
because of the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, it seems that the
Social Security Administration (SSA) notified
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lot of SSI recipients that they had received more money than they were
entitled to receive and that they would have to pay back the
difference.

Consequently, a federal lawsuit
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filed against SSA in 2021 challenging that determination. The lead
plaintiff, Laquana Campos, was an SSI recipient who was taking this
action on behalf of herself and her fourteen-year-old child, who also
received SSI. The defendant, Kilolo Kijakazi, was the Acting
Commissioner of SSA.

The lawsuit asserted that when SSA closed all of its field offices in
March 2020, it “severely impaired” the ability of people who
receive SSI “to report information to SSA that is critical to
maintaining their eligibility.” It said, “SSI recipients must
demonstrate that they meet strict resource and income limits each
month” and must “promptly report any changes in their finances to
SSA.”

A settlement
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the lawsuit was approved by the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of New York late last year. In the settlement, SSA
agrees to waive all SSI overpayments incurred for the months of March
through September 2020.

In other words, those who were notified by SSA that they received
money to which they were not entitled (for pandemic-related reasons)
during those months, will no longer be required to pay it back.

The settlement also says that SSA must grant all of these waivers by
June 2025 and that those getting waivers do not have to apply or take
any other action to become eligible. SSA is also required to reimburse
anyone who fully or partially paid back the amount of the overpayment
SSA said they owed.

The settlement will provide relief for more than two million people
who rely on SSI for income, according to
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in Aging, a national non-profit legal advocacy organization, which
filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs.

So at least those people will be a little less broke.

_Mike Ervin is a writer and disability rights activist living in
Chicago. He blogs at Smart Ass Cripple
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sarcasm since 2010.”_

_A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good! Since
1909, The Progressive magazine has aimed to amplify voices of
dissent and voices under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal
of championing grassroots progressive politics._

* Social Security
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* disability justice
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